Articles of interest to people living in or involved with co-operative or condominium apartments in New York City. An emphasis will be on improving and running a building, which is of special interest to board members.

More property owners filing tax appeals

The city's Tax Commission has been swamped with appeals this year from major property owners hoping to lower their tax bills, The Post has learned.

Officials said 44,488 appeals were filed by owners of apartment, co-op, condo and office buildings, up 5.6 percent from the 42,106 filed last year.

"It's a substantial increase," said Tax Commission President Glenn Newman.

Typically, only the largest property owners have the resources -- and the financial incentive -- to file appeals.

Last year, for example, only 1,389 of 699,809 small-home owners challenged the assessments by the Finance Department, which form the basis for tax bills on the city's 1,015,968 properties. Comparable figures for small-home owners this year weren't available last week.

The odds of winning are long.

In Manhattan last year, just 2,500 of 18,830 challenges were successful. So the appeals numbers tend to stay flat from year-to-year.

The Finance Department's tentative assessment roll, issued in January, lags behind the market by a year, which explains why it increased the value of office buildings by an average of 7 percent even as prices were falling.

In an appeal, owners can present updated income and expense data through the end of the year.

"When the market is rising, most real-estate operators would not complain about that," said one official. "This year, it's a different story. If your tenant was Lehman Brothers, you probably have a good chance of getting a reduction."

One lawyer who handles appeals said owners of hotels and department stores, which have easy-to-document records of being caught in the economic downturn, have strong cases for reductions in their assessments.